


No Plan

by queensmooting



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Codependency, Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Hallucinations, M/M, Mythology References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:53:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22932076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queensmooting/pseuds/queensmooting
Summary: Will's known purgatory. This isn't purgatory.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	No Plan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oheart/gifts).



> for my amazing friendo gabi. i was gonna wait til your birthday but i just (clenches fist) could not. w/e it's pisces season so it counts
> 
> anyway there's no plan & there's no plot. this is just william lying on the shore thinking about his choices and also gratuitous achilles/patroclus nonsense. yes the title is the hozier song bc i have one brain cell and i will wring it dry

Will curls tight on his couch, protective, one hand on Winston’s head and another holding  _ The Iliad _ open on his lap. It’s after Hannibal’s sentencing. He knows because a part of him remembers, because he feels Hannibal trying to enter the room. Will concentrates on the pages, as if words alone could stop an evening shadow from advancing across the floor. Somewhere outside water cracks against rock.

“Reading about our old friends?”

Will doesn’t answer. Winston’s fur is cool and slick under his hand, more like kelp than hair.

“Which book are you on?”

Will doesn’t answer.  _ XVI. Like you don’t know. _

After reading the same sentence thirty times he realizes the folly in ignoring the shadow, in pretending the man wasn’t a persistent coat of dust over every piece of his life, catching every light. It was a petty, hollow comfort to imagine Hannibal shut away with the same problem.

“Battle changes Achilles,” Will tells the room. “No, not changes...reveals.”

“How so?”

“All that beautiful, godly control releases in wrath. His worthy foes meet their ends with honor and find Achilles’ sword to be merciful. Their bodies were regarded with respect.” A shiver runs through him at the memory of blood, its stain and thrill. “Those who wronged Achilles felt no such mercy. Even in death their corpses knew no honor in a kindly burial. No rest for their bones in their homelands.”

“You missed me.”

“Did I?”

Will lets the shadow enter the room, looking much as he did the night he surrendered. Snowflakes in his hair. Pyrrhic victory in the dark of his eyes. No room in Will’s imagination allows him to picture what Hannibal must look like that night, pallid from dark stone, caged by Will’s renunciation.

“Achilles was certain of his destiny,” Hannibal says. “What about dear Patroclus?”

“I don’t know if he was such a fatalist.” Winston vanishes from Will’s side.

“The limits of a mortal mind?”

“Maybe. He couldn’t know what would happen after he donned that armor.”

A wave crashes against the window, sending a rattle through the house. Will almost feels cold.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Hannibal says as the water drowns out his words. “Perhaps what matters is he knew Achilles would find a way back to him. That they would always--”

*

Will’s phone rings somewhere far above, amplified by the open shell of air. The sound, vivid as it was, reels him away from the soft stream of memory.

Dashes of sea rock cross his skin. A bed of pebble cradles his back. Blood drips slowly in his mouth and hands, neither warm nor cold. There’s a weight in his arms that isn't heavy, only another part of him. The weight breathes, troubling his collar.

He should hurt. He doesn’t.

The moon writhes brightly in the black ocean of their purgatory. Every blink distorts the darkness until they could be anywhere. He feels like one of his fish in a quiet river, watching stars swim beyond the surface, nothing left to fight.

Wherever they were, it was shared. It was enough. Will closes his eyes and waits for a side to claim them.

*

Hannibal sketches at his desk, the hearth behind him stoking a distant memory of warmth. Instead of pencil scratch, Will hears waves.

“I remember this night.” 

Hannibal is slow to look away from his drawing, but when he does there’s open interest in fire-lit eyes. “What do you remember?”

"I had nearly won. I almost had you." Will keeps a careful distance, something he hadn't then. “You let your guard down with me, and I turned it into artillery in my game with Jack.”

More than anything he remembers the want, how its thorns grew faster than he could prune.

Hannibal's head tilts. His voice is analytical, quiet under the blustery wail at the window. “You imagined my interest in you as pure pageantry, didn't you? Romance only in its most Gothic sensibilities.”

“A love indivisible from horror.” Will isn’t entirely convinced this is real, that anything is real. This time he doesn’t have to be afraid of relaxing his own guard. “I wasn’t wrong, but I was missing something. Something I didn’t want to see. It was safer to think that of you.”

“That someone like me could never feel anything so human and tender--”

“--as what I felt.” Honesty is slow to rejoin Will after years shut away, reluctant to climb free of his throat. “Feel.”

Hannibal nods, like Will’s just made some logical leap in a case.

“But it wasn’t all--it wasn’t just that. We couldn't have one without the other, could we?” Will watches the stilling of Hannibal's pencil against paper. He veers dangerously toward rambling. “I should have left with you. This night. We could have--”

“I know, Will. I know. Sit down.”

The fire drains his fight. He crouches at the side of the desk, resting his head on his arms.

“When you drew this...were you imagining my death?”

“Ours,” Hannibal clarifies. “Patroclus was not the only one to undergo a becoming, to blur into his beloved. The death of Patroclus’s body was the death of Achilles’s soul.”

"They couldn’t leave each other. Not really."

"Never."

Hannibal shades Patroclus’ hair. Will can almost imagine a gentle scratching at his own scalp.

*

The phone rings again, a tinny persistence somewhere beyond their reach. Will hadn’t realized the tide was upon them until it drained away. He finds he misses it, like a blanket tugged away in winter.

It seemed the Atlantic rejected them. Spat them from her depths.

_ As Hell itself might do _ . Will can hear Jack saying it now, pacing the coastline, appreciating the poetry of the situation. He always had a head for it, if not the stomach.

_ Yes Jack, everything’s fine. Only a slight change of plan _ . He imagines answering his phone with Hannibal listening in, laughing softly at his ear.

The phone stops ringing, or continues endlessly, the sound lost to a pulse of water against the cliff. It’s strange to think of their old colleagues still existing, still on their trail, all their precious time wasted in meaningless pursuit.

The weight in his arms makes a sound, low and hurt, shaking some of the dreamy haze from Will’s head.

“Hannibal?”

The sound of his own voice shocks the numbness from his limbs. Then he feels the itch of his wet clothes prickle at his skin. Then Hannibal’s uneven breath at his throat. Then the cold. The tooth-numbing, nerve-deep cold.

And Will realizes this isn’t purgatory. He’s known purgatory. Purgatory was Hannibal in a prison of his own making, a living grave to haunt. Purgatory was years perched behind a closed doorway, waiting for a knock.

Neither of them whole, neither of them free.

Will looks to his own hands, cradling Hannibal’s wound, paling scarlet. He wonders how long they’ve held guard there, keeping death at bay.

A sick rage rises in his throat, sharper than the drying blood at his cheek. Will understands Achilles’ hatred of Hector’s corpse, how no death could be slow enough. What he would give for a chariot, a length of rope, to drag Dolarhyde until he was nothing but bone scraped raw--

Will draws a breath, deep and cold. The Dragon was dead. They could live.

*

He stands in a house overlooking a cliff, a wine glass in hand, watching Hannibal bleed. Terrible, but not immediately fatal. It could be Dolarhyde missed something vital. It could be.

“I was going to cut you there,” Will's gaze falls to the gunshot wound. “When we were outside the gallery. When I had the knife in my hand.”

“We would have matched,” Hannibal says, utterly delighted.

“Until Chiyoh stopped me.”

“She did.” Hannibal nods toward the patio, where blood dries into wings. “Then he did.”

Will’s jaw tightens. He doesn’t need another reason to loathe a cooling corpse. He takes a sip from the glass and wishes it was real, wishes it could settle the ache in his stomach.

“The look in your eyes when his hands were around my throat." Admiration softens Hannibal's voice. "You would make armies balk.”

Will blinks and he’s back on the shore, Hannibal’s eyes open and alert. Another slow blink and he’s back at the house that might have been theirs to share, seeing Hannibal laid low, every shred of pretense gone. How frightening it must have been for him. How fulfilling.

"You're awake, aren't you?” Will says. “You're really here with me now."

The moon swims back into view. "Always."

*

He should have some response to that, but the talk drains them both. Hannibal’s head slowly grows heavy against Will's shoulder. Will takes the rare lucid moment to observe their surroundings, rough and wild as they were, brimming with life.

If divine intervention was to win, he could first drag them away from the water, back under the trees, to rest among shaded grass and worm-tilled earth. To let the insects tend their wounds. To let wildflowers grow around and through them, garish and beautiful as a centerpiece on Hannibal’s table. It might be better than the sea, more certain to avoid separation.

Will wonders if they’d be found together, if they could hide long enough to for flesh to mingle, to become indistinguishable rot. He wonders if their souls would find rest mid-fall over the ocean, where no one could touch them again.

It might be easier. They'd never known what it was to coexist without some game between them. Some agenda. Some blade. What would become of them if they survived the night? If they were meant to live?

Will smiles, amused, to imagine them crafting a life together. Cooking for each other, taking in strays, nights out in the city. To voice years of idle, lonely thoughts and finally find them answered. All the trimmings of normalcy.

Perhaps in time another hunt, if worthy prey presented itself. He might have one in mind already.

His smile fades as the images come to him too quickly, with too much ease. If they were meant only to chase each other forever, Will isn't sure he can bear to lack him long enough to find out.

*

Will lies in overgrown grass with Hannibal at his side. A muted dawn stretches forever above them. 

After years, after minutes, a tiny black crab scuttles toward Will’s leg. Hannibal moves to swat it away, and Will catches his wrist.

“Leave it alone,” Will mutters, tongue heavy. “Hey, you’re cold.” He frowns, brings Hannibal’s wrist to his nose. “You smell like the sea.”

Hannibal brushes the backs of his fingers against Will’s cheek. “Yes. And your confusion suggests the second stage of hypothermia.”

“Hm.” He releases Hannibal’s hand, which settles in the dry grass between them, trailing dying autumn stalks between his fingers.

“On the other hand, the cold has constricted our vessels, slowing our blood loss.”

“Leave it to you to find a bright side.” Somewhere in the field ravens chatter about their latest find. He can almost smell the antler-mounted body. “So we’re not dead.”

“No, Will.”

He supposes Hannibal will ask what he thinks about that, but he doesn’t. Only watches. Patient as ever. Will suddenly can’t breathe in the face of it, of what’s been in front of him all along. He can’t imagine how it took so long to see.

There’s reasons enough why he took them over, reasons Hannibal must know well by the acceptance in every relaxed line of his face, the way he went loose and obliging in Will’s arms in the moments before. But there’s something else he needs Hannibal to know now. Just in case.

“I thought,” Will says, “if anyone would die, it'd be you first." He looks at the wound left by Dolarhyde. "I wasn’t going to let him be the one to take you.”

It’s a rare, proud thing to leave Hannibal at a loss for words. The humming bugs and wind-tousled trees go silent until the two of them could be the only life in the world.

“What?”

Hannibal turns his palm upward. “Oh Will. I waited for you for so long.”

It's not a complaint or admonishment, only a statement of fact. Still Will doesn’t answer, doesn’t apologize for the blood they’ve left on the road to understanding each other. Instead he meets Hannibal’s fingers with his own. The clouds thin enough to let the first sunlight warm their hands.

*

Gull wings flutter loudly somewhere over his head. Will waves an arm out of instinct and the sore stiffness of his shoulder raises a shout in his throat. Still he keeps the arm raised to block too-bright light.

The sun.  _ Shit _ . He hadn’t meant to sleep.

“Hannibal?”

Will turns too fast, dizziness spinning through his body. Hannibal is pale and cool beside him, but after a moment his eyes open. The relief is like being in the air again, like nothing but wind and water. Like flying.

“Can you hear me?” Will asks.

“Yes,” Hannibal says, like nothing made him happier.

Will’s eyes fall to Hannibal’s wound. He places a careful hand there, fingers dipping into his side, triggering only a small pulse of fresh blood.

“As Thomas doubted Christ,” Hannibal murmurs.

“What?”

Hannibal smiles, his eyes so dark and fond. “Nothing, Will. You’re warmer now. That’s good.”

“Did you just--”

“Shh. Look.”

He follows Hannibal’s gaze to the horizon, putting weight on his good arm to haul them both into sitting positions. A sliver of sunrise turns low-hanging clouds into gold smoke over the water. The sight clears the doubt from his mind, spins thought into conviction.

“Come on,” Will says.

The effort of standing makes Will realize how much more they’d need, and soon. Antibiotics, fluids. A car. A boat. A hiding place. At this point Will would be even happy to see Chiyoh at the cliff crest, in all her scorn and loyalty. 

Shuffling on his feet, with Hannibal bracing himself at his side, Will’s aware of every sore, torn place in his body. But he doesn’t wish for anything gentler, anything less real. Not anymore.

“I believe,” Hannibal says haltingly, “when our old friends drifted into their own afterlife, they were somewhat more...graceful.”

Will laughs, too loud in the morning’s peace. He bumps his forehead against Hannibal’s, bordering on painful, enough to keep him grounded.

“You always know.”

“I do.” Hannibal leans into the touch. “What do I always know this time?”

_ Old friends _ . When he thinks of Achilles and Patroclus now he understands Hannibal’s attitude toward mortality. How insignificant, a thing like death, against that love.

“Nothing.” Will smiles. “Let’s go.”


End file.
